Landscape design

Italian Art Déco on display in Forlì

Companies like Martinuzzi, Venini and FontanaArte. Great artists, from Gio Ponti to Depero, Buzzi and Fortuny. A large exhibition in Forlì explores the Art Déco period in the Italian landscape

The cultural landscape of the 1920s was dominated by what in Italian is called 1925 Style, in reference to the year of the famous Universal Exposition in Paris dedicated to the decorative arts, which the term Art Déco also derives from. It is to this unmistakeable style that the San Domenico Museums of Forlì dedicate the exhibition that is now open through 18 June called Art Déco. Gli anni ruggenti in Italia(Art Déco. The roaring twenties in Italy), curated by Valerio Terraroli with Claudia Casali and Stefania Cretella.

Embracing its multiple international influences, the exhibition hones in on the history and evolution of a versatile and pervasive style, which between the first post-war period and the great depression of 1929 permeated architecture, painting, sculpture and the applied arts throughout Europe, and then spread to the United States in the 1930s. Born from a mix of inspirations drawn not only from international artistic vanguards and exotic cultures, but also from the modernity expressed by the cinema, by transatlantic ships or by railway stations, and by the Mediterranean and archaeological past, Art Déco was able to blend these innumerable influences into an extremely original style, which the biennials in Monza, Paris and Barcelona helped spread.

In Italy, a market thirsty for novelty but still tied to the tradition of artistic craftsmanship was the basis for an extraordinary productiveness, which not only allowed for the emergence of companies like Martinuzzi, Venini and FontanaArte, but which also had room for the memorable work of Gio Ponti for Richard Ginori, the furnishings of Buzzi, Muzio, Lancia and Portaluppi, the silks of Ravasi and Fortuny, and Depero’s unmistakeable cloth tapestries.

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